


luster

by enmity



Category: Persona Series, Persona | Revelations Persona
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, smushed two shorts as one...rofl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 03:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12949881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Eriko visits often these days.





	luster

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you'll forgive me taking a bit of levity w/ canon rip. fsr the impression i got from the p1 ending is that maki after the events of the game does eventually realize the full scope of her actions under kandori's influence ... eventually. apologies it's been a while since i finished the game but it's just one of those days. also wow 50th p1 fanfic

**1**

Eriko visits her often these days, filling in the silence when Masao isn’t around. Masao is nice and listens to her with his hands fidgeting on top of his knees but Eriko comes in bringing magazines and books with foreign titles and their delightful, otherworldly stories; she talks about their classmates sometimes, vibrantly about Naoya and Hidehiko, Yuki and Yuka and everyone else, and it makes Maki feel a little happy, a little wistful, but she never fails to listen.

Once Eriko wonders aloud if she’s being insensitive, to talk about this so candidly with her, about the world outside these pristine hospital walls, and Maki pauses, looks at her hands. They’re pale and thin under the cold light, and for a moment she thinks she’d like to say _yes_ , _just a little, even if I know you don’t mean to—_ but the thought feels suddenly odd to her, suddenly a bit less true, and she wonders if perhaps it isn’t, even though it would be the truth if it were Masao (and feels slightly guilty at the acknowledgment). She wonders, perhaps, if it’s because it’s Eriko. She raises her eyes from her lap and her gaze meets the other girl’s.

Eriko’s eyes crease a bit when she smiles, instinctive, and Maki’s by now noticed that when Eriko smiles at her it’s always small, but always genuine, this graceful upturn of her lips and the minute creasing of her eyes. It may be an odd thing to hold onto but Maki holds onto it anyway, the same way she does with her paintings and chained mirror and the wonderful, far-off myths about unknowable creatures Eriko delights in telling. Holds onto it like something precious, something glasslike and liable to slip away and scatter at any moment. There aren’t many comforts allowed to her from the confines of her bed and the drip around her left wrist, and so this is alright, or so she chooses to tell herself.

It isn’t such a bad thing, she thinks then, to allow herself something so simple—and so Maki smiles back at her, says, _no, not at all_ , and means it.

**2**

“You’re—you’ve always been so good to me, Elly,” she admits once, testing the nickname, surrounded by the quiet privacy of Eriko being the only visitor left in her room. The syllables come out tentative yet startlingly familiar, as if they’ve been waiting for her to say them all this time, and it makes her smile, makes her chest flutter, a hundred tiny fires being lit inside of her chanting in unison. “It feels… so belated to say, but—thank you. And not just for bringing everyone along to visit,” she says. “I just feel as if I’m indebted to you, in so many other ways…

“I keep having these dreams … that I did something bad, once; that I’d fallen into a terrible place, and it was you—you and everyone else that helped me out. I remember you staying so kind to me, despite what I did, awful thing it was. I suppose now’s the time to tell you how grateful I am, for you—for staying. Even now.”

“Oh, Maki,” says Eriko—Elly, now—fondly and bright with the sun falling in past the blinds, warm honey-colored light. Her hand covers Maki’s in an unprecedented moment of proximity and Maki can’t bring herself to look up at her; she worries what face she might show if she did, the plain truth it might tell her in the absence of words. Heat rises to her cheeks that can’t be explained away entirely by the afternoon sun. “I’m so happy. I—I don’t know what else to say.”

“You don’t need to,” Maki says, eventually, and lets her eyes flutter closed; her fingers curl a little inside Elly’s hand, surrounded by her radiating warmth. “And I’m happy, too. When I’m with you, just like this. Is that enough to know?”

And Elly tips her head down, giving Maki her answer.


End file.
